HORTON: Did Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program Really Focus on American Journalists?

[L. Coyote]

January 22, 2009
Did Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program Really Focus on American Journalists?
· No Comment By Scott Horton - http://harpers.org/archive/2009/01/hbc-90004257


For the last several weeks, Michael Hayden, the former CIA director who previously led the NSA, has been sweating bullets. In recent press meetings he was a bundle of worries, regularly expressing worries about “prosecutions.” Fear of the consequences of criminal acts has been a steady theme for Hayden. In her book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer reports that in 2004 Deputy Attorney General James Comey was “taken aback” by Hayden’s comments when he was let in on the details of the program that Hayden ran at NSA. “I’m glad you’re joining me, because I won’t have to be lonely, sitting all by myself at the witness table, in the administration of John Kerry.”

Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” we learned that Hayden is concerned about more than just allegations that detainees in CIA custody were tortured. Former NSA analyst Russell Tice, a source for the New York Times disclosure of details of the program, appears to offer further details on the program. He reports that under Hayden the NSA was looking at “everyone’s” communications—telephone conversations, emails, faxes, IMs—and that in addition to suspect terrorists, the NSA was carefully culling data from Internet and phone lines to track the communications of U.S. journalists. This was done under the pretense of pulling out a control group that was not suspect. But Tice reports that when he started asking questions about why journalists were sorted out for special scrutiny, he found that he himself came under close scrutiny and was removed from involvement in the program. He found that he had come under intense FBI surveillance and his communications in all forms were being monitored. After expressing severe doubts about the operations of the NSA program, both Deputy Attorney General Comey and former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith both believe they also came under intense surveillance. Both decided to leave the Bush Administration after these developments.

If Tice’s allegations are correct, then Hayden managed a program which was in essence a massive felony, violating strict federal criminal statutes that limit the NSA’s domestic surveillance operations. .....

[aquart]

NOW can we please put someone in jail?

And you know what, I won't mind a bit if it's the little "I was only following orders" guys. I want them to know that excuse still sucks.

[kentuck]

1. Did you ever doubt it?

And political opponents of the Administration also?? Including Jay Rockefeller and others?

[aquart]

2. Funny thing happened to my Yahoo soap opera group in the year after 9/11.

General Hospital fans are bitter, angry people. And, in our private groups, we said so. We hated the violence on the show, the bombings, the killings. We fantasized violent reciprocal vengeance on TIIC who were ruining the show with this crap. We even compared them to members of the Bush administration. (On 9/11, when political boards crashed, we spent the day emailing each other and talking talking talking about what was happening. I would give anything to have that discussion on my hard drive.)

One of our members in the DC area is married to a Jordanian named Mohammed. Whom she mentioned frequently and with great love. And who was our insight into Arab minds and hearts. She never let us dehumanize them. She explained customs, told us what Mohammed was hearing from home. (Told us about the day the FBI came to her door and apologetically arrested him in front of their children. $5000 bail to get him home. That was during the general roundup. The place they took him was full of Arabs and Pakistanis all trying to make bail.)

One day we couldn't get into our group. We checked around. No one else we knew with a Yahoo group was having a problem. Our group was locked for over two weeks with no explanation and then disappeared altogether. Oops, sorry, said Yahoo. We started a new group.

I still imagine a lonely FBI agent carefully reading ten thousand messages lambasting General Hospital and discussing every other thing in our lives.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. which explains how they found the means to attack Dem politicians.

Spitzer, etc.

[bdamomma]

5. they could of have been wiretapping Pelosi too. makes you wonder?

[hughee99]

3. It was certainly effective, then...

I don't believe any terrorist attacks were committed by American Journalists since the program started.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Well, that just goes to show

how effective the intelligence gathering was. They were able to break up every plot by journalists to attack this country.

[azul]

7. But they missed the bankers and traders and speculators

that crashed their weapons of mass greed into the US economy.

And also missed or looked elsewhere from the oil cartel's gifted program for mass extinctions. Oh well.

[hughee99]

9. You can't spy effectively on everyone at once.

besides, I think we could all see what those people were doing. No need for a special program to figure that out.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Intense surveillance of DAG Comey?! Good God!

This is the guy who raced to A.G. John Ashcroft's hospital bed late at night, to defend Ashcroft from being forced (by Alberto Gonzales, then WH counsel) to sign off on this very program. Ashcroft had signed his powers over to Deputy A.G. Comey temporarily, because Ashcroft would be in a drugged state for several days, recuperating from a serious operation. Comey refused to sign off on the spying program because he deemed it illegal. Gonzo/WH tried to make an end run around that delegation of power to Comey, by getting Ashcroft to sign off on the illegal spying program, late at night, in his hospital bed. Ashcroft's wife called Comey, alerting him that Gonzo was on the way. Comey raced through the late night streets of Washington DC to Ashcroft's side, along the way calling FBI head Mueller, who could get their more quickly with FBI agents. He told Mueller to protect Ashcroft from being forced to sign anything. In the hospital room, Gonzo ignored Comey, the Acting A.G., when he came into the room, but Ashcroft himself (who could barely raise his head from the pillow) then told Gonzo, in no uncertain terms, that Comey was in charge, and refused to sign off on the illegal spying program.

That's the story I remember Comey telling to a Congressional committee (not that long ago--about a year?).

So the Bush Junta was "intensely surveilling" THIS GUY----Comey--the guy who wouldn't sign, the guy who foiled their plot to expand the illegal spying and give it legal cover.

Although nothing the Bush junta would do would surprise me, my jaw just nevertheless dropped in amazement, I guess because I still--after all they've done (that we know about)--have expectations regarding the limits on their arrogance and hubris. They were spying on their own top people--people who believed in their "war on terror," top law enforcement who approved of the "Patriot Act," Republicans, Bushites!

Another surprise (surprised me, at the time of the Comey testimony)--it was those very people, with their own limits of legality and decency, who stopped them.